Saturday, August 30, 2014

President Maduro
insisted yesterday that the current economic crisis in Venezuela is not the
result of misguided economic policies by his government, but of a coordinated
Economic War waged by the local opposition and the “Empire”.

“No, what this
[crisis] demonstrates is the failure of the speculative and criminal capitalist
model, which claims earnings in dollars. And many of those involved [in the
Economic War] are part of the bourgeoisie that are seeking huge profits, and
then they take that money and go on and finance many other things, they want to
upset the country. We are facing a war against peace,” explained
Maduro.

Economic
experts and opposition critics who have pointed to more structural causes
for the scarcity of basic products are, according
to Maduro, “rightist factors or expert capitalist opinion makers. Not once
have they condemned smuggling of goods. All these spokespersons of big business
are justifying smuggling and are condemning those that are fighting for the
country. They are so mean that they are unwilling to fight by my side, and to
be on the side of the people, in this battle for the economic stability of the
country, because they are betting on harming the country.”

Instead, what really
needs to be done to stabilize the economy is to increase controls even more. For Maduro
the “struggle is based on three basic pillars: an anti-smuggling plan, the
implementation of the Biometric System, to fight against the illicit use of
products, and the creation of a special intelligence unit against the Economic
War.”

The President
insisted that he would not take “neo-liberal measures. [Because] We can and we must construct a different
economy.”

Friday, August 29, 2014

By this blog’s count,
July 3 was the last day an important government official mentioned the plot to
kill president Maduro. Since then, conspiracy claims by the Venezuelan
government have focused on the Economic War, and more specifically on the
supposed links between the opposition and “smuggling mafias.”

I expect the stories
of magnicidio plots to come up again
in the next few months; perhaps if street protests flare up again, or the
“anti-smuggling crusade” runs out of steam...

In the meantime, here
is a translation of a remarkable press note published by Telesur in its Web page
back in 28 May this year. It presents a “timeline” form of the magnicidio plot to kill Maduro, from May
2013 to May 2014.

Especially noteworthy
is how the report is framed in the first paragraph: the “extreme Right” has
seen its plans fail and therefore it has little option but to resort to a magnicidio. Since it covers up to May,
it does not include the June and July story, but it ends with a foreboding “Latent
conspiracy” entry.

The glossary presented
at the end, serving as “historical context” for the note, is also very interesting.
The author of the article felt the need to include, not only terms strictly
related to the magnicidio narrative,
but also other issues and people mentioned in other government conspiracy
theories, such as the “Fiesta Mexicana”, Vicente Fox, Leopoldo López, and even
the Aviador. Old stories, such as the
paracachitos of 2004, are also
included as the first signs of subversive plots.

In all, the article
is a very complete report on the magnicidio
story from the government’s perspective.

Historical timeline:
The magnicidio plan against Nicolás
Maduro in Venezuela

May 28, 2014

Venezuela’s president
Nicolas Maduro has been the focus of magnicidio
conspiracies since he took power. The extreme Right –both national and
international- has realized the total failure of its interventionist and disruptive
plans against the Bolivarian Revolution, therefore attempting to kill the head
of State is the only option left for them.

2013

Uribe implicated: May 3. President Nicolás Maduro announced that he
has information about magnicidio
plans against him, and directly blamed the rightist Colombian ex-president
Álvaro Uribe. He also pointed to Roger Noriega and Otto Reich as part of the
plan from Miami.

Paramilitaries: July 10. Venezuela’s Interior minister, Miguel Rodríguez
Torres, informed that according to investigations, the two Colombian
paramilitary groups that had been arrested the week before had plans to try to
kill Maduro.

More implicated: July 31. Diosdado Cabello informed that businessman
Eduardo Macaya Álvarez, the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, and Álvaro Uribe
are some of the persons that are plotting magnicidio
plans against Nicolás Maduro. Rodríguez Torres also informed that the first
meetings of the conspirators were in Miami and Bogota in April. Uribe, the de facto ex-president of Honduras
Roberto Micheletti, an envoy of Posada Carriles, a Colombian active armed
forces officer, and a CIA officer, participated in those meetings.

Sicarios: August 26. Two Colombian nationals–Victor Joan Gueche Mosquera and
Erick Leonardo Huerta Rios- are detained on August 15 near Caracas carrying
orders to assassinate Maduro, or if that were not possible, assassinate the president
of Parliament (Diosdado Cabello). The name of the operation was “Carpeta Amarilla”.

Officers expelled: September 30. Maduro orders the expulsion of three officers
from the US embassy –Elizabeth Hundeland, David Mutt, and Kelly Kaiderlinh- for
their implication in destabilizing actions against the country.

New arrests: December 20. The Colombian police arrests
Alejandro Caicedo Alfonso, alias “Scooby” in Antioquia (Colombia). He stands accused of participation in a plot to assassinate
Nicolás maduro and Diosdado Cabello in August 2013.

2014

Generals Implicated: March 25. Maduro announces the arrest of three Air
Force generals, allied to the Venezuelan extreme right, who were planning to
execute a coup d’état against his government.

Latent conspiracy: May 28. Mayor of Libertador
municipality Jorge Rodríguez presented evidence of a plan to assassinate Maduro
and other high executive officials. The plot includes Venezuelan opposition members
and business people with the support of the US Department of State and the Ambassador
of the US in Colombia.

Historical context:

Plan País: a plan by Humberto Prado (director of the NGO Observatorio de
Prisiones) to destabilize the country from prison facilities.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

Yesterday during the
Regional Meeting of UNASUR in Caracas to discuss human rights and citizen’s
security, Venezuela’s Interior and Justice Minister, Miguel
Rodríguez Torres explained that in the previous regimes the intelligence
police service (then called DISIP) “was an institution outside of the law. They
did everything they wanted with the human rights of Venezuelans. The DISIP was
involved in the banishment of people, torture, and the murdering of many
Venezuelans for political reasons.”

Instead, according to
the Minister, the current Servicio
Bolivariano de Inteligencia (SEBIN) is an institution that upholds human
rights. The proof of this is the way in which the SEBIN and the National Guard dealt
with the opposition protests at the beginning of this year: “We broke the guarimbas [street barricades]. It was
three months of a conspiracy on the streets by the extreme Right that wanted to
reach power by violent means, and we did this with a maximum respect to human
rights, and whenever and officer incurred in any violation, we proceeded immediately.
We have several officers that are facing trials for the use of fire arms of for
having mistreated Venezuelans,” said Rodríguez Torres.

Five
officers of SEBIN stand accused of having fired live rounds at protesters
on 12 February in La Candelaria, Caracas, killing one person and injuring
several others. The SEBIN has repeatedly been accused, by the
opposition and human
rights NGOs, of human rights violations.

In televised
interview yesterday the Vice-president
of the National Assembly, Dario Vivas, explained how the long lines to buy
basic goods are not caused by scarcity, but are really part of a plot by the
opposition to “generate discontent” and “cause trouble” [meter cizaña].

The conspiracy
includes the use of social media as a tool to call people to queue at supermarkets:
“When products arrive [at supermarkets] they call people to generate lines, and
there are people who just go there to make noise,” explained Vivas.

These supermarket flash
mobs, according to Vivas, then turn into the perfect breeding ground for dissident
talk: “I recently went to a supermarket and heard a women saying ‘I have a
sister and Chávez gave her a pension and Maduro took it away’, that’s what they
are saying now: that Chávez is good so they can then go and attack Nicolás
[Maduro]. There are people that go to those lines to talk bad about the country
or the National Government and thus to generate a sensation of nuisance during
the time the citizen is waiting to buy the products.”

A second phase of the
plot is the financing of the opposition with funds from smuggling: “When we see
that they [the Right] oppose the measures taken by the government such as the
implementation of the biometric system to avoid the bachaqueo [buying goods with the purpose of smuggling], this is no
coincidence: the Right uses this strategy to generate convulsions or
confrontations among the Venezuelan People.”

“Smuggling finances
the Right, this is why they are against the fight against smuggling, and they
will oppose any measure by the Nacional Government. They are now looking for a
justification to restart street protests,” added
Vivas.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

President Maduro
presided today over the induction
ceremony for the newly established PSUV’s “Commission for the Transition to
the Socialist Economic Model and the Struggle against the Economic War”.

“The Economic War is the
main mode of war against the revolution,” said
Maduro.

According to the
President, the team in charge of the struggle against the Economic War, headed
by the Superintendent of Fair Prices, Andrés Eloy Méndez, “will dismantle, in a
battle which will go on for several years, the forms the Economic War takes against
the revolutionary model.”

“The capitalists, the
dominant bourgeoisie, and the Empire, have resorted to the Economic War as their
main form of fighting in order to dismantle and create chaos in Venezuela’s
social life,” explained Maduro.

He also made clear
that his government is not responsible for the Venezuela’s economic crisis: “There
are still Venezuelans who are confused and believe that the problem is that
Maduro has made mistakes in his economic policies. Is Maduro the problem? No.
What about the economic war, the smuggling, the extraction of goods. The Right
refuses to condemn [the economic war] because they are part of it. And what
about the wave of price speculation, the hoarding of products, the
international attacks against the accounts of the Republic? Where do they come
from?”

Maduro stressed that
he will not give in to “neoliberal pressure form the Right, from the
capitalists,” to change his economic policies. He also said that his government
will not deregulate the prices of basic goods or “liberalize” the exchange
control system.

President Nicolás
Maduro announced that the governing party PSUV will stablish a “Commission for
Economy and Political Organization” which,
according to the Agencia Venezolana de
Noticias, “will have two main
objectives: to support with proposals the process of transition from the
capitalist economic model to a socialist and productive model, and to fight the
economic war waged in all its modalities by the Right.”

The part of the Commission
devoted to fighting the economic war will be presided by the Superintendent of
Just Prices, Andrés Eloy Méndez.

Maduro explained that
his functions will be to “continue to formulate the actions for the battle [against
the Economic War] in all its manifestations, such as smuggling, speculation,
and financial and commercial sabotage.”

“Again Táchira was
surprised today with guarimbas
[street barricades]. Every time that the government comes down full force
against criminal bands, against the capos of the mafias [that smuggle] all the products,
they start supporting violence. These people are financed by the smugglers. (…)
They have ties to the Empire,” said
the governor.

Minister of Interior,
Miguel Rodriguez Torres, also
declared yesterday that “intelligence networks displayed along the frontier
areas of Táchira to fight against smuggling, have detected a group of people
linked to the protests in San Cristobal.”

Friday, August 22, 2014

In his weekly show on
public television, the president of the National Assembly, Diosdado
Cabello reasserted the government’s narrative which claims that smuggling and
hoarding are not the consequence of economic policies, but instead are part of
an “economic war”, which is producing scarcity of basic goods and aims at destabilizing
Venezuela’s government.

“What we are going through
is an economic war that wants to bleed our country, that wants to even take
away the medicines. (…) The leader of the Bolivarian Revolution, Hugo Chávez,
made clear that there are only two economic models: capitalism, defended by
sectors of the right, and socialism, which is the only system that can continue
to guarantee social justice to the people,” said Cabello.

He added that “smuggling,
speculation, and hoarding are part of a plan by the bourgeoisie and by some
groups of the opposition who are justifying this scourge that is harming the
Venezuelan economy. The Right says that if we attack smuggling we are not
solving the problem, but we will continue to attack it, because the smuggling
mafias are finding a lot of support among the opposition. Silence [by the
opposition] means support [of smuggling], it means complicity.”

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Vice-president Jorge
Arreaza thanked the Bolivarian Armed Forces for defending the Venezuelan people
against what theAgencia
Venezolana de Noticias (AVN)called “the economic war, of speculation
and hoarding of basic products that has been waged by sectors of the extreme right
with the aim of destabilizing the country.”

Arreaza also told Armed
Forces officers attending a special seminar in Fuerte Tiuna, that they should
mistrust anyone who criticized the recent counter-smuggling measures taken by
the government, such as the closing of the border with Colombia:

“Those who criticize
the measures either have a direct interest in the smuggling mafias or want to
destabilize, they want people to continue suffering long lines to buy products,”
said
the vice-president.

According to the AVN
press note on the seminar: “Arreaza reminded the public that the attacks and
the boycott against the stability of the Venezuelan economy began at the end of
2012, and we can see this reflected –he said- in the economic indicators, which
have since then presented an irregular pattern. This pattern intensified with
the passing of the Comandante of the
Bolivarian Revolution, Hugo Chávez, on March 5, 2013.”

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

In an interview for Venezolana de Televisión (VTV),
Iliana Medina, leader of the pro-government party Patria Para Todos (PPT), declared that she is convinced that the
smuggling of products from Venezuela to Colombia is part of a political plan to
“dismantle” the revolution.

“The opposition has
said that the economic system has failed, and that it needs to be changed. (…)
On the other hand we have smuggling, which is the expression of a very strongly
articulated web of diverse sectors linked to the economy, (…) but it becomes a
plan to dismantle the whole revolutionary vision of rights that Chávez promoted
with such strength,” said Medina.

The interviewer pressured
her by suggesting the possibility that smuggling could be the result of certain
economic conditions. Medina responded that a “plan of this nature” does in fact
need those economic conditions, however to discover the plan it is necessary to
look into the opinions of the opposition criticizing the recent measures taken
by the government to control smuggling.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

President Maduro declared
via twitter that the smuggling of basic subsidized products from Venezuela
to Colombia is part of the Economic War he claims is being waged against
Venezuela.

“Smuggling is a vice
that harms the economic life of our countries and only benefits the parasitic
mafias that plunder our people. Smuggling is part of the economic war against
the country. We must continue the struggle to defeat it and to achieve a
healthy economy,” wrote Maduro (@NicolasMaduro).

As part
of the agreements reached by Maduro with Colombian President Juan Manuel
Santos, Venezuela will be deploying 17,000 army officials at key frontier
points, and border crossings will be closed from 10pm to 5am.

Criticisms of the
measures were denounced by Maduro as part of an “anti-patriotic” campaign: “To
the mass media of the parasitic bourgeoisie: enough with this anti-patriotic
campaign.”

Friday, August 8, 2014

Airlines are having
problems in Venezuela, not as a consequence of the distortions caused by money
exchange controls, but because they are waging a war against Venezuelans who
want to fly abroad, according
to President Maduro. This “small war” fought by the airlines is part of the
broader “economic war” against the country.

“They are trying a
small war [guerrita] to take away
from us our flights abroad, as a part of the economic war. I have been very
clear with the international airlines: any business that tries to leave or to blackmail
Venezuela, is a business that won’t be allowed to return,” warned Maduro.